Depression

In your weariness, you stand upon a steep hill covered in thick feet of snow.

When you tread upon it, the layers give way under your weight, sending you further down and farther from your goal. Each step is a battle against the depth of the snow and the grade of the hill; each attempt wearing down the strength you ought to have - twice as fast. And, if you fail to move, to straing against the grade, to push against the snow - you sink lower. Down into the icy depths you've stepped yourself into, until you cannot feel your feet or legs up to the point the cold air meets them. Then, should you try to move at all, you will only fall face forward into it, sinking wholly under any escape.

Atop that hill is the cliched golden city, and in your blue-white grasp are clearly the keys to unlock its gates. Your pockets have been packed with goods: sapphires, diamonds, rich wines, fine cheeses, silk scarves a goddess would envy, coins that total more than you could hope to count. And, you could reach in with your frozen hands to finger what you might still feel of such treasures, pull them out and gaze upon their shine and luster with bright eyes.

But they are no harbor from the cold. They are no stepping stone from the snow.
They cannot rise you from this dead.

Around you may be thers, sinking all alike in the snow. Others likewise drowning in the cold. And, you could raise your voice about the quiet to call our. You could speak and share in their plight - they in yours. You could beckon each other on were you to do so. You could cry out for help.

But their voices mingled with your's would not keep your knees above the snow. Would not keep your blood from the cold. Would not bring you from the trap.

A Form

It's been an inordinately long amound of time since I wrote much of anything at all. Back in school - high school, college, what have you - I used to write all sorts of things. I suppose I never really thought much of the endless hours of wasted time I had on my hands, obligated to sit at a desk with pen readily in hand. I suppose I never thought much of the infuriatingly narrow-minded professors who spurned on creativity, despite their best efforts to drown it out. I suppose I never considered that I used to be a writer...

Time plays an ugly trick on us. It can't truely be said it was only our devistating education system that made my muse spread wing. It was the innane bordum of hours on end with nothing else to do. When given a blank canvas, my soul was desperate to color it. I suppose the problem now is how "busy" I've had to become. Always something to do - it's the American way, isn't it? Always busy, always occupied, always multi-tasking. Never a moment to break the pattern.

But, there is an effort being made to change all of that, or at least to backlash against it. It may appear to be yet another schedule, more rigorous than calling every hour not clocked into work "downtime". In reality, it is just a reminder. To allow the muse to spread wing even in this cramped up space. To take the time, here and there, to breathe and remember that this shallow shell with its expration stamp is not the only thing we add up to. To be a living machine, instead of a dead one.

That means creating again. Which means inkshedding again. For a while, I felt it was useless, a waste of time, energy, paper, thought. But, I am beginning to realize this shedding of ideas, of the soul's chaff, of ink is the best way to get at whatever creature it is has hidden under all that ugly mundanity.

This is the best way to shed the illusion of life. To get back to the intangible things that we are. The best way to see --

I am not a barista or bariste who serves you at your whim. I am not a server or a worker or a woman. I am not a human or a mammal or flesh and blood. I am, but I am not.

These things you see are mere manifestations of this self that you are hoping to glimpse. I am not these forms.

I am ink and pen and paper and thought and dust. I am a winged thing that floats among nothing, black as space and night. I am the blackbird singing, the butterfly wings fluttering, the moon in the night shining. I am all of creation that gives breath to life and ease to the heat of day. And all life and all heat is a part, a portion of this form.

For I am spirit, and I will go where I will. For we are all wind, and we will blow where we will.